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Though there are many passages that contradict the doctrine of original sin, I can think of none that do it stronger than these verses in Ezekiel. Any doctrine that says we are judged by the conduct of our ancestors, including Adam's, is clearly wrong. While we are here, compare Calvin's statement quoted earlier with the following Scripture: God: "For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies. Calvin: " The Definition of Sin "Everyone who practices sin practices lawlessness.
Sin is lawlessness. Sin is an act of unrighteousness. It is something we do. It is an act that is lawless, or contrary to God's law. The Bible never refers to sin as something that we are born with. It is never defined in God's word as a natural weakness or an inherited trait. For example, the Lord commands, "Thou shall not commit murder. While it is true that all of Adam's descendants pay the consequences of Adam's sin i.
A child of a drunkard may suffer the consequences of his parent's misbehavior, but this does not mean the child himself is guilty of drunkenness. One reads in vain for the idea of original sin in the account of man's fall as related in the Bible. Genesis records many consequences resulting from the first transgression. There is pain in childbirth, the ground is cursed, and physical death the body returning to dust is decreed.
But nothing at all about children inheriting the guilt of Adam's sin. What About This? Some take David's words to mean that he was born a sinner, but that is not what he said.
Original sin is an Augustine Christian doctrine that says that everyone is born sinful. This means that they are born with a built-in urge to do bad things and to disobey God. It is an important doctrine within the Roman Catholic Church. Original sin is not just this inherited spiritual disease or defect in human nature; it's also the 'condemnation' that goes with that fault.
Some Christians believe that original sin explains why there is so much wrong in a world created by a perfect God, and why people need to have their souls 'saved' by God.
Original sin is a condition, not something that people do: It's the normal spiritual and psychological condition of human beings, not their bad thoughts and actions. Even a newborn baby who hasn't done anything at all is damaged by original sin. In traditional Christian teaching, original sin is the result of Adam and Eve's disobedience to God when they ate a forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.
Original sin affects individuals by separating them from God, and bringing dissatisfaction and guilt into their lives. On a world scale, original sin explains such things as genocide, war , cruelty, exploitation and abuse, and the "presence and universality of sin in human history". Some Christians believe that human beings can't cure themselves of original sin. The only way they can be saved from its consequences is by the grace of God.
The only way people can receive God's grace is by accepting his love and forgiveness, believing that Jesus Christ died on the cross to redeem their sins, and getting baptised. Modern thinkers don't think the doctrine of original sin is literally true, but they do think it contains real truths about the human condition:. Original sin is part of the Doctrine of the Fall , which is the belief that when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they 'fell' from perfection and brought evil into a perfect world.
For Christians, the fall is inseparable from redemption - the act by which human souls are washed clean of the stain of original sin. Christians believe that the story of the fall and redemption is a story of two Adams, and sometimes refer to Christ as the "Second Adam". The first Adam sins and causes humanity to fall; the second Adam atones for that sin with his death and redeems humanity. The story behind original sin is told in the Old Testament book of Genesis:.
God originally made a perfect world. He created Adam and put him to live in the Garden of Eden - a blissful place where he had nothing to do but take care of the garden. God told Adam that he could do anything he wanted, except eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Later, God created Eve to be Adam's wife.
Eve was tricked by the serpent into eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of life and death. She gave some of the fruit to Adam and he ate it too. Adam and Eve realised that they were naked and hid in shame. When God next visited the Garden he realised that they had disobeyed him. God also banned them from eating the fruit of the tree of life, and so death entered the world.
Christians believe that when Adam and Eve sinned in Eden and turned away from God they brought sin into the world and turned the whole human race away from God. The doctrine absolves God of responsibility for the evils that make our world imperfect by teaching that Adam and Eve introduced evil to a perfect world when they disobeyed him.
An alternative understanding of the story of the fall emphasises that Adam and Eve did wrong because they 'gave in' to the temptation of the serpent in the Garden of Eden. This second understanding fits well with human psychology. Looking at it this way, original sin becomes the tendency for human beings to 'give in' when tempted by the prevailing evils of the society around them, rather than standing up for good, and it helps explain why each individual finds temptation so hard to resist.
As the Bible puts it:. A third understanding teaches not so much that Adam's sin brought sin into the world, but that it removed from humanity the gift that enabled people to be perfectly obedient to God. Adam was created in the image of God with the potential to be perfectly fulfilled through his existence and his relationship with God.
But Man failed to fulfil his potential and opted to go it alone and estrange himself from God. Jesus as the "Second Adam" re-established the relationship with God and showed how man can become perfectly human - which puts him in right relationship with both the creator and his creation.
Original sin is a difficult doctrine, and a rather gloomy one, but it had some key theological benefits that have kept it as a mainstream Christian teaching:. What effect has the concept of original sin had on Western culture, and how did it influence gender and morality in Christian Europe? One rather difficult explanation says that the whole human race was somehow contained in Adam and so when Adam fell, they fell too.
The other explanation, expanded below, is that all human beings are descendants of Adam and Eve. Modern Catholic teaching is less clear about the mechanism of transmission and refers to it as a mystery. St Augustine, who largely devised the theory of original sin, thought that original sin was transmitted from generation to generation through sexual intercourse.
Augustine did not say exactly how this happened. He said that it was transmitted by "concupiscence", when people had sex and conceived a child. Concupiscence is a technical theological word that Augustine used to refer to sexual desire as something bad in the soul that was inseparable from normal human sexual impulses. Sexual desire was bad, he taught, because it could totally overwhelm those caught up in it, depriving them of self-control and rational thought. This disapproving view of passion was quite common among Christians of Augustine's time.
Augustine thought that concupiscence was present in all sexual intercourse. He thought that it was just as bad and uncontrolled in a marriage as it was in non-marital sex, but that an excuse could be made for it within marriage because its purpose was to produce legitimate children. This bad element in sex provides the means by which original sin is transmitted from father to child. It transmits both humanity's guilt for Adam's crime and the sickness or defect that gives human beings a sinful nature.
Now from this concupiscence whatever comes into being by natural birth is bound by original sin The Council or Trent , or Trentine councils were a series of Roman Catholic theological meetings in response to the Reformation.
The Council of Trent gave the official stamp to the idea that original sin was transferred from generation to generation by propagation - which means during the sexual act that led to conception. This formalised the notion of Original Sin as part of Roman Catholic doctrine. The Council explicitly ruled out the idea that original sin was transferred by "imitation"; in order to block the idea that human beings just copied the bad example set by their parents and others.
These closely related ideas teach that original sin is passed on by copying the sinful tendencies of other people.
The Council of Trent decreed that this idea was false. Many churches accept that infants can be cleansed of original sin by being baptised soon after birth. The other elements required are carried out by adults on the baby's behalf during the ceremony.
A prince can confer a hereditary dignity on condition that the recipient remains loyal, and that, in case of his rebelling, this dignity shall be taken from him and, in consequence, from his descendants. It is not, however, intelligible that the prince, on account of a fault committed by a father, should order the hands and feet of all the descendants of the guilty man to be cut off immediately after their birth.
This comparison represents the doctrine of Luther which we in no way defend. The doctrine of the Church supposes no sensible or afflictive punishment in the next world for children who die with nothing but original sin on their souls, but only the privation of the sight of God [Denz. Original sin is the privation of sanctifying grace in consequence of the sin of Adam. This solution, which is that of St.
Thomas, goes back to St. Anselm and even to the traditions of the early Church , as we see by the declaration of the Second Council of Orange A.
As death is the privation of the principle of life, the death of the soul is the privation of sanctifying grace which according to all theologians is the principle of supernatural life.
The Council of Trent , although it did not make this solution obligatory by a definition, regarded it with favor and authorized its use cf. Original sin is described not only as the death of the soul Sess. VI, cap. VI , and as each child should have had personally his own justice so now after the fall he suffers his own privation of justice.
We may add an argument based on the principle of St. This principle is developed by St. In a child original sin is distinct from the fault of Adam , it is one of its effects. But which of these effects is it? Death and Suffering. These are purely physical evils and cannot be called sin. Moreover St. Paul, and after him the councils, regarded death and original sin as two distinct things transmitted by Adam. This rebellion of the lower appetite transmitted to us by Adam is an occasion of sin and in that sense comes nearer to moral evil.
However, the occasion of a fault is not necessarily a fault, and whilst original sin is effaced by baptism concupiscence still remains in the person baptized; therefore original sin and concupiscence cannot be one and the same thing, as was held by the early Protestants see Council of Trent , Sess. The absence of sanctifying grace in the newborn child is also an effect of the first sin, for Adam , having received holiness and justice from God , lost it not only for himself but also for us loc.
If he has lost it for us we were to have received it from him at our birth with the other prerogatives of our race. Therefore the absence of sanctifying grace in a child is a real privation, it is the want of something that should have been in him according to the Divine plan. If this favor is not merely something physical but is something in the moral order, if it is holiness, its privation may be called a sin.
But sanctifying grace is holiness and is so called by the Council of Trent , because holiness consists in union with God , and grace unites us intimately with God. Moral goodness consists in this that our action is according to the moral law, but grace is a deification, as the Fathers say, a perfect conformity with God who is the first rule of all morality.
See Grace. Sanctifying grace therefore enters into the moral order, not as an act that passes but as a permanent tendency which exists even when the subject who possesses it does not act; it is a turning towards God , conversio ad Deum. Consequently the privation of this grace, even without any other act, would be a stain, a moral deformity, a turning away from God , aversio a Deo, and this character is not found in any other effect of the fault of Adam.
This privation, therefore, is the hereditary stain. Augustine De vera relig. The Church has condemned the opposite solution given by Baius [prop.
Original sin is not an act but, as already explained, a state, a permanent privation, and this can be voluntary indirectly just as a drunken man is deprived of his reason and incapable of using his liberty, yet it is by his free fault that he is in this state and hence his drunkenness, his privation of reason is voluntary and can be imputed to him.
But how can original sin be even indirectly voluntary for a child that has never used its personal free will?
Certain Protestants hold that the child on coming to the use of reason will consent to its original sin; but in reality no one ever thought of giving this consent.
Besides, even before the use of reason, sin is already in the soul, according to the data of Tradition regarding the baptism of children and the sin contracted by generation. Some theosophists and spiritists admit the preexistence of souls that have sinned in a former life which they now forget; but apart from the absurdity of this metempsychosis, it contradicts the doctrine of original sin, it substitutes a number of particular sins for the one sin of a common father transmitting sin and death to all cf.
The whole Christian religion, says St. Augustine, may be summed up in the intervention of two men, the one to ruin us, the other to save us De pecc. Ambrose, cited by St. Augustine Opus imperf. Earlier still is the testimony of St.
Thomas thus explains this moral unity of our will with the will of Adam. Considered in the second way an act can be his although he has not done it himself, nor has it been done by his free will but by the rest of the society or by its head, the nation being considered as doing what the prince does. For a society is considered as a single man of whom the individuals are the different members St.
Paul, I Cor. Thus the multitude of men who receive their human nature from Adam is to be considered as a single community or rather as a single body. It is not a personal crime, objected the Pelagians. Being a distinct person I am not strictly responsible for the crime of another, the act is not mine.
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